The Architect Associate exam validates that you can design baseline OCI architectures that are secure, operable, and reasonably cost-aware.
What you should be able to do
- Design VCNs with public/private subnets, route tables, gateways, and security controls.
- Choose connectivity patterns (VPN, FastConnect, DRG) conceptually and match them to requirements.
- Place load balancers correctly and understand health checks and backend pools at a high level.
- Select compute + storage services for an app: instance pools, block/object/file storage.
- Make correct “purpose-level” database selections and understand backup/availability basics.
- Add observability: monitoring, logging, alarms, audit trail.
- Apply governance basics: compartment strategy, tagging, budgets/quotas.
Prerequisites and recommended path
If you’re new to OCI, do the Foundations hub first:
How to prepare efficiently
- Study the Syllabus in order.
- After each topic, do targeted drills (15–25 questions).
- Build an “architecture reflex” using the Cheatsheet—especially networking pickers.
Common pitfalls
- Overusing public subnets (most tiers should be private).
- Mixing up security lists vs NSGs and where each applies.
- Forgetting governance/security “basics” (compartment scope, encryption defaults, audit/logging).